Garry Conille, the longtime United Nations civil servant tapped to lead Haiti’s latest political transition, finally made his way back to his country on Saturday.
One of five finalists for Haiti’s interim prime minister, Conille had led his campaign for the top job while outside of Haiti. His selection came shortly after he met with six of the seven voting members of the country’s new transitional presidential council via videoconference on Tuesday.
On Saturday, he flew out of Miami International Airport, where he boarded a Sunrise Airways flight around 10:30 a.m., said Joubert Pascal, who works with protocol services at the Haitian consulate in Miami.
Following his selection, Conille, 58, told the Miami Herald that he is “deeply honored and humbled to accept the role of prime minister during this critical time” in Haiti’s history.
“Haiti faces significant challenges, but I am confident that together we can overcome them,” he said.
Garry Conille speaks with journalists after a press conference in Port-au-Prince in 2011. Conille was named Haiti’s new prime minister, Tuesday. Dieu Nalio Chery/Associated Press
Conille will take over from Michel Patrick Boisvert, the country’s finance minister, who was appointed interim prime minister after Ariel Henry was forced to step down by Washington and Caribbean leaders charged with helping Haitians broker the March 11 deal that led to the new political transition.
Henry, a neurosurgeon who led Haiti after the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, lost U.S. support amid heightened tensions in the country and as armed gangs launched a united front in late February to topple his government while he was in Kenya finalizing an agreement for an international force to help Haiti.
Conille’s selection comes amid ongoing gang violence, and controversy after the council attempted to name a former sports minister as prime minister in violation of its own rules.
In congratulating the council on naming Conille, Washington urged both the council and the new prime minister “to work collaboratively and to engage all stakeholders in support of the Haitian people, who continue to suffer the brutality of horrific gang violence.”
State Department Spokesman Matthew Miller said the U.S. is encouraging the council and Conille “to act swiftly to nominate a credible, accountable, and inclusive government and Provisional Electoral Council to enable free and fair elections, and the provision of security and basic services for all Haitians.”
Conille, no stranger to the challenges facing Haiti – he served as prime minister from October 2011 to February 2012 and was until recently the Latin America regional director for UNICEF, the U.N.’s child welfare agency – has a monumental task before him.
Armed gangs control over 80% of Port-au-Prince, and their increasing power amid the political void and paralysis following Moïse’s assassination has taken the country to the brink of humanitarian and economic disaster.
Requests for hundreds of millions of dollars to fund a Kenya-led international force and a humanitarian appeal by the United Nations have not raised much money. Schools, hospitals and pharmacies have been destroyed during the nearly three-month gang insurgency that also forced a suspension of all commercial flights into the country. People’s livelihoods have evaporated and more than 360,000 Haitians are estimated to be displaced by gangs that continue to attack neighborhoods.
Meanwhile, more than 4,000 inmates remain at large after the country’s two largest prisons were raided in early March, before gangs targeted the seaport and airport, and the violence has led to the deaths or injuries of more than 2,500 Haitians, according to the U.N.
Though humanitarian aid agencies continue to provide assistance, the situation remains grim.
About 5 million Haitians, or nearly half of the population, face acute hunger, with 1.64 million on the verge of starvation, the World Food Program has said, adding that this is the worst it has been since the country’s devastating 2010 earthquake. After the earthquake Conille assisted as chief of staff to the U.N. Special Envoy to Haiti at the time, former President Bill Clinton.
Welcoming Conille’s selection on behalf U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, spokesman Stéphane Dujarric told journalists in New York on Friday that the U.N.’s humanitarian response plan for Haiti remains largely underfunded. Of $674 million the U.N. is asking for, only 21% of the request is funded with only $142 million in the bank.
Dujarric also cited a new report by UNICEF, Conille’s former employer, that said between 30% to 50% of gang members are children.
“These children are subject to coercion, abuse and exploitation stemming from persistent social, economic and political fragility caused by the ongoing violence that has spiraled parts of the country into chaos,” Dujarric said.
Like the U.S., Guterres has also issued a call for an inclusive political transition in Haiti and for Haitians to work together to ensure progress in the transition and to restore democratic elections.
“It remains critical that progress in the political transition be accompanied by urgently needed security gains,” Dujarric said.
Conille’s arrival in Port-au-Prince will be the first time many get to meet him. Like Henry, Conille, a gynecologist, is a Haitian-trained physician, although he has spent most of his career with the U.N.
Conille will have nine presidents to deal with — the seven voting members of the presidential transition council and two nonvoting observers, who since their April swearing-in have struggled to find their way forward.
Conille’s first leadership test will be to choose a chief of staff and put a government together. With political parties vying to get an edge in the upcoming elections, how much leeway he gets in making appointments to key government posts that parties will want to control will help set the tone on the political front.
The new government and the presidential council will then need to ready the country for the deployment of the Kenya-led Multinational Security Support mission and then appoint a nine-member provisional electoral council to begin working on organizing elections.
The new prime minister will need to navigate all of this while managing the perception that he was imposed on Haitians by the U.S., whose role in the selection process has been the subject of speculation and political discussions since Tuesday’s quick selection of Conille.
Though Washington has been trying to let Haitians figure out their own solution to the ongoing crisis, it remains involved in the process, from the construction of the base for the new international security mission to implementing sanctions against those accused of supporting gangs and fanning instability.
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